Jacksonville, Fla. – The Comprehensive Stroke Program at The Neuroscience Institute at Shands Jacksonville invites the public to meet their Comprehensive Stroke Alert Team in the Learning Resource Center Atrium on Wednesday, May 12 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
According to the American Stroke Association, someone in America has a stroke every 45 seconds. Every 3 minutes, someone dies of one. Stroke is the nation’s third leading cause of death, ranking just behind heart disease and all forms of cancer, and is the leading cause of long-term adult disability in the US.
A stroke is an interruption or blockage of blood flow to the brain that can cause a variety of physical problems. Some of the most common symptoms are difficulty with speech, partial or total loss of use on one side of a person’s body, visual disturbances, coma and even death.
Shands Jacksonville’s Comprehensive Stroke Alert Team will be available Wednesday to present their comprehensive approach for the treatment of an acute stroke patient. The public will have the opportunity to ask questions of the individual departments which make up the comprehensive stroke team – for instance, the TraumaOne air ambulance service which provides quick transportation to patients suffering from a stroke.
Attendees may talk with our faculty physicians about the cutting-edge therapies offered at Shands Jacksonville. Bharat Mehta, M.D., a University of Florida professor of radiology at Shands Jacksonville, is actively performing a coiling procedure that treats and prevents aneurysms in the brain. In addition, the hospital’s neurologists have been successful in administering thrombolytic tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), commonly known as the “Clot Buster.”
“tPA has proven successful in improving the recovery of some ischemic stroke patients if administered within 3 hours of the onset of symptoms,” explained Scott Silliman, M.D., a UF associate professor of neurology and director of The Comprehensive Stroke Program at Shands Jacksonville. “Using tPA, we have successfully reversed paralysis, slurred speech and other devastating effects of stroke.”
For additional information about The Comprehensive Stroke Program at The Neuroscience Institute at Shands Jacksonville, contact Barbara Quinn at (904) 244-9971.